CASTINE — The Maine Maritime Mariners make a trip to Lewiston to face the Bates Bobcats for the first ever softball series between the two schools this afternoon.

Maine Maritime (7-5) at Bates (5-6) | Wednesday, April 4, 2012 | Lafayette St. Field | 3:30 p.m.

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Series History: The Mariners will face the Bobcats for the first time in program history. From the absolutely useless information file, Maine Maritime is 10-19 in games against schools that start with a B.

Mariners Last Outing: Colby used late-inning runs to sweep Maine Maritime 4-3, 4-2 in softball at Ritchie Field Sunday afternoon. The Mules (4-10) broke a 3-3 tie with a run in the sixth to take the first game against the Mariners (7-5), and then posted a pair in the seventh in order to secure the nightcap.

Bates Last Outing: Christina Galese hit a tie-breaking solo home run in the bottom of the fifth inning to lead Trinity College to a 2-1 win over the Bates College softball team in NESCAC East action Saturday afternoon on Campus Field. Six different Bobcats tallied one hit apiece, for a 6-5 advantage in hits for Bates. Senior co-captain Lauren Dobish knocked in the lone run for the Bobcats, scoring senior Karen Ullmann, who also had two stolen bases on the afternoon.

Five Things You Should Know…

5. Wednesday's games are Bates' first home contests of the 2012 campaign.

4. Maine Maritime allowed 13 leadoff batters to reach through 26 innings on the 0-4 weekend. That's a trend that needs to stop in order to beat Bates. The Bobcats have put their leadoff batter on in half of their games this year, and they have pounced with runners in scoring position. As a team, Bates sports a .364 RiSP average, led by Mary Lewis' RiSP average of .538.  She also advances runners in .619 of her at bats. Lauren Dobish presents problems as well. She owns a .500 RiSP average and advances runners half of the time the opportunity arises.

3. The female Mariner of the Month of March is Erica Taylor. Taylor turned in an outstanding first month of the softball season batting .429 with four doubles, three home runs and 10 runs driven in. The sophomore boasts an .800 slugging percentage and has a team best on-base percentage of .500. In the circle, she has struck out 37 batters, while issuing only seven walks. She has a perfect fielding percentage and has pitched a pair of shutouts in building a 3-3 record.

2. The formula for winning is really easy: score first, give up more hits, but be sure you are leading after four innings. The Mariners are 4-0 when they get on the board first. They are 6-1 when their opponents have more hits, and 7-0 when leading after four innings.

1. We can't talk about it until it's over, but a particular Mariner is on a certain kind of impressive tear that you could find on the special reports section of the traditional statistics page on MarinerSports.org. If you were to add that to the tear that this player ended the 2011 season on, you will see that this run is pretty impressive. If it were to continue through both halves against Bates, it would need to carry on for 18 more games in order to tie the NCAA record owned by Moravian College's Heather Bortz, who was 12 shy of Joltin' Joe's 56. Any additional bread crumbs would surely constitute a jinx. MarinerSports.org will not be a part of that.

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